Having established how to develop attractive and engaging applications with Qlik Sense, it's time to turn our attention from authors and business users. Instead, we will consider the requirements of administrators. In this chapter, we will move away from data and analysis to what's needed to run a Qlik Sense installation.
In this chapter, you will find information about the following topics:
- Architecture
- Clustering and nodes
- Licenses and tokens
- Streams and security concepts
Qlik Sense has an architecture that is different from the QlikView Server architecture. Some components are very similar; others are very different. Hence, even if you know the QlikView architecture, you need to look at the following sections. In them, you will find an overview of some of the concepts in Qlik Sense.
When you install the Qlik Sense server, you will install seven services. These are the cornerstones of the architecture. They can be deployed in different ways to suit different deployment purposes.
The Qlik Sense services are as follows:
- Qlik Sense Engine Service (The QIX engine): This is the application service, which handles all application calculations and logic. Everything that concerns the data analysis is handled by this service.
- Qlik Sense Printing Service: This manages the Qlik Sense exports, reporting, and printing. This is new for Qlik Sense Version 2.
- Qlik Sense Proxy Service (QPS): This manages the Qlik Sense authentication, session handling, and load balancing.
- Qlik Sense Repository Service (QRS): This manages persistence of apps and the synchronization of licensing, security, and service configuration data.
- Qlik Sense Repository Database: This service runs a PostgreSQL database used by the QRS.
- Qlik Sense Scheduler Service (QSS): This manages the scheduled reloads of Qlik Sense apps as well as other types of events, for example, task chaining.
- Qlik Sense Service Dispatcher: This is a service controller that is used to launch and manage additional Qlik Sense services.
In a standard installation, all seven services run on the same computer, and this works fine as long as the load on the server doesn't become too heavy.
The services can run under any account, but should preferably run under an account dedicated to the Qlik Sense services.
Qlik Sense has two different clients: the hub and the management console (QMC).
The hub is used to access, edit, and publish apps. It always runs in a web browser, regardless of whether you use a desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone to access it.
The basic Qlik Sense architecture
Qlik Management Console (QMC) is used for all types of administration. QMC is a web page found at https://<computer_name>/qmc/.
A link to this is installed in your Start menu during the installation.
The QMC start page
In QMC, you can manage and monitor everything for your installation: apps, streams, security, users, and so on.
To the left, you have the four main groups: tools to manage the content, tools to manage resources, tools for governance, and tools to configure the system.
The QMC is a multiuser environment, designed for the delegation of administration of, for example, streams to authors, if this fits a company's work process.
The apps are subject-specific; files that contain data, prepared visualizations, load script, and so on. This is where the analysis is done. From a user's perspective, an app is organized into sheets, sheet objects (visualizations), bookmarks, and stories. An app can be private or published to a stream.
If you want to access an app to do analysis, you can access it through the hub. However, if you want to perform any administrative task, such as importing or publishing an app, you can do it through QMC.
Qlik Sense's site has an architecture that allows a distributed deployment. In other words, you can have several computers, each with a Qlik Sense installation, that work together and are managed as one coherent server. In such a configuration, each computer is called a node and the entire installation is called a cluster.
The installation can be configured so that data is synchronized between the different nodes, and so that the appropriate server is used for the client request. The purpose is, of course, to increase the system resilience and deployment flexibility.
The next important concept in Qlik Sense is streams. A stream is a dynamic, collaborative workgroup that is used when publishing applications. Hence, when you publish an app to a stream, you publish it to a group of people.
A stream has members, security rules, and tags. It enables the user to read or publish apps, sheets, and stories. The users who have publishing rights to a stream create the content for that specific stream, and the users who have read access are the consumers of the apps.
The Streams sheet